Friday, June 24, 2005

Saskatoon Falls

Those of you from Saskatoon know this, but for those of you who aren't I should tell you that we have this river called the South Saskatchewan River that runs right throught our city. Currently it is higher now than it has been in 50 years. As it turns out that is extremely interesting to us who live here, and the best place to see the higher water level is the weir. I don't really know what a weir is, I can only describe it as a little dam in the river that has water flowing over it. Normally the difference in height between the upstream and downstream sides of the weir is maybe 5 feet so what you get is a little waterfall cascading over the curved hump of the weir.

Well I wanted to go check out the river too, so I drove down to the weir. There is this nice observation area there and when I got there it was full of people who wanted to see this once-in-a-lifetime river depth. A nearby bridge was also lined with onlookers eager to see the raging river. It looked very touristy, as most everyone had a camera. It reminded me of pictures of Niagara Falls, and I wondered if there were any strangers to these parts here to check out what everyone was looking at. It amused me to think of that because the river was so deep the weir was submerged. The only hints that it was there at all was that the water flowed in a slight hump over top it, and occasional swirly waves broke the surface. In fact, except for the people standing around it pretty much looked like any other part of the river. Any strangers visiting Saskatoon who happened to stop to see what everyone was looking at might have been a little curious why there was an observation area there, but they would have been very confused over the hundred or so awe-struck people taking pictures of this practically uneventful area of the river.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

never really thought about what other people would think, kind of looks funy.